But a new study reveals the ants have a never-before-seen strategy that helps the colony weather wartime casualties. Unlike all other ants, Megaponera analis soldiers carry their injured comrades home.

While this may seem like a small courtesy to the individuals being rescued, these tiny heroics add up, says study leader Erik T. Frank, a myrmecologist at the University Würzburg in Germany.

Even ants that lost multiple legs recovered in about a day. Amazingly, almost all of the rescued ants were able to participate in later termite-mound raids.

Though other ant species save their nestmates' lives in moments of immediate danger, the matabele ant behavior is unique because they don't know if the wounded ants would die without their help.